Nuance Nina named Best Intelligent Assistant Innovation during September 27 AIconics Awards ceremony at The AI Summit, the world's largest conference to showcase AI solutions that are transforming organizations. The AIconics Awards are the only independently-judged awards that celebrate AI for businesses and Nuance Nina was selected as part of a competitive analysis of more than 300 entries. Nuance Nina and customers win Intelligent Assistant Awards during September 18 ceremony at the Opus Research IA Conference. Nuance was honored alongside customers FedEx and IP Australia, with partner Datacom, for delivering notable customer experiences through natural language understanding, machine learning, and artificial intelligence. The Opus Research Intelligent Assistant Awards recognize leading brands who are utilizing virtual assistants to redefine digital commerce and customer care.

WASHINGTON – Federal investigators have opened their first probe of a midair collision between a civilian drone and a traditional aircraft. An Army UH-60 helicopter was flying east of Staten Island on Sept. 21 when it collided with a small, consumer Phantom 4 drone, the National Transportation Safety Board said in a press release Thursday. The Federal Aviation Administration, which is assisting the investigation, has logged more than 1,000 reports of drone safety incidents, including cases of the devices flying close to jetliners. DJI is assisting the NTSB investigation, the company said in an emailed statement.

"There are too many risks and technical barriers to overcome in trying to stitch together an ABM strategy using disparate technologies that don't use a common data model to follow and measure a business audience throughout the entire funnel and lifecycle," said Chris Golec, CEO of Demandbase. "What's been missing from ABM technology is an integrated platform that makes it easier to implement, execute and grow your ABM efforts seamlessly. I'm confident the new AI-based platform introduced today with fully integrated targeting, engagement and sales conversion solutions will set us apart for many years to come." The Demandbase ABM Platform makes it easy to build target accounts from CRM data, by uploading a pre-existing account list, or by leveraging buyer intent signals generated by the only AI-powered ABM platform that learns from 50 billion B2B interactions every month. Marketers can further segment and manage these audiences by a number of firmographic variables such as industry, size, location and others.

The battle for smart-speaker supremacy in Japan has begun, with major firms announcing the launches Thursday of new products armed with high-tech voice-controlled features. With the aim of taking the lead in the AI powered smart-speaker market, which many observers believe will become the next major trend, Line Corp. and Google both debuted their new products for the Japanese market the same day. "The smartphone era began 10 years ago, but we are about to enter a new era where everything will be connected to the internet and optimized by AI," said Jun Masuda, chief strategy and marketing officer at Line, during a news conference Thursday at the firm's headquarters in Tokyo. Line said its Clova Wave speaker is now available online for ¥14,000. Masuda said the critical aspect of the coming era will be gadgets equipped with AI voice agents allowing voice control. Tech firms have been gearing up to develop AI smart-speaker platforms, which are expected to create a new secondary market similar to how smartphones created a huge market for apps.

Technology companies like IBM have arguably overhyped the capabilities of their artificial intelligence technologies over the past few years. But some executives believe the field is turning a corner, and businesses are starting to deliver practical applications of A.I. "There's some reality setting in," says Boston software executive Tom Wilde. "Some proof points need to show up. That said, the dollars being spent on [A.I. products] are pennies of what they're going to be" in the future. Wilde will try to deliver on the promise of A.I. in the business world as CEO of Indico, a small Boston-based machine learning and data analytics startup.

Existing approaches to security and management are no longer sufficient, which is why the headlines are now full of security breaches and performance outages,

SAN MATEO, Calif., Oct. 3, 2017 -- Marketo, Inc., the leading provider of engagement marketing software and solutions, has announced Marketo ContentAI, an artificial intelligence-powered solution that engages each customer with the most relevant content across channels. In addition, the solution uniquely predicts the content most likely to convert each audience, helping marketers develop data-driven content marketing plans. Today's announcement reinforces Marketo's commitment to providing marketers with leading-edge AI solutions that empower them to win in the Engagement Economy. ContentAI is the only solution that makes content personalization scalable for marketers by auto-discovering and cataloging website assets and using AI to determine the best content to display to each audience. Marketers personalize their websites, mobile experiences, and email with ease through drag-and-drop content placement, while maintaining control over what is delivered through each channel.

DeepMind, the Google sibling focusing on artificial intelligence, has announced the launch of an'Ethics and Society' unit to study the impact of new technologies on society. The announcement by the London-based group acquired by Google parent Alphabet is the latest effort in the tech sector to ease concerns that robotics and artificial intelligence will veer out of human control. 'As scientists developing AI technologies, we have a responsibility to conduct and support open research and investigation into the wider implications of our work,' said a blog post announcing the launch Tuesday by DeepMind's Verity Harding and Sean Legassick. DeepMind, the Google sibling focusing on artificial intelligence, has announced the launch of an'Ethics and Society' unit to study the impact of new technologies on society. Google's DeepMind AI relies on artificial neural networks, which try to simulate the way the brain works in order to learn.

Confirming one of the industry's worst-kept secrets, Google announced today that it finally has a cost-reduced version of its Google Home smart speaker. The $49 Google Home Mini, available for preorder now, will go head to head with the Echo Dot that Amazon introduced way back in March 2016. Like the original Google Home, the Mini will feature fabric over its speaker grill. But Google assures us this is no ordinary fabric. Google's lead designer for home hardware, Isabelle Olsson, said the company invented its own yarn for the Mini--going through 157 iterations to find just the right colors: chalk, charcoal, and coral.

Last time Google made the best Chromebook ever, it was the Chromebook Pixel. The boxy, beautiful $1,000 laptop wasn't designed to go everywhere with you so much as to be so outrageously impressive that it might prompt someone to ask, "Wait, that's a Chromebook?" Google made it to prove a point, not take over the market. This time, Google went a different way. For the Pixel Book, which the company announced today at an event in San Francisco, Google tried instead to build a thoroughly modern laptop, one that you'll hardly even notice in your bag. It has a 12.3-inch screen that rotates a full 360 degrees, so you can use the Pixel Book like either a laptop or a tablet.